Your Results Chapter Needs a Structure, Not Just Statistics

Data analysis training teaches you to run analyses. It stumbles when it's time to explain what the analyses mean. So the results chapter becomes the part of the dissertation everyone dreads: a dry hassle that reviewers and readers suffer through, tables and p-values in a row, waiting for someone to make them mean something.

Part of the problem is that data isn't thought of as something that needs storytelling. But without storytelling, you don't have an explanation. And if you don't have an explanation, then nobody will know what you're talking about.

Storytelling itself has been used for millennia, with hundreds of millions of words dedicated to writing what makes a 'good' story. One thing that most agree on is that the structure of your story can make or break the audience's enjoyment and willingness to read.

To find your structure, ask four questions: Where does the data begin and end? What is the relationship between the beginning and the ending? What is interesting about this data? What are the main ideas you want to communicate, and what explanations get the reader there?

Watch how fast this works. Say your data tracks a mentoring program. Beginning: students enter with similar grades. End: mentored students are still enrolled at higher rates two years later. Relationship: two groups that started together, pulled apart. Interesting: the gap didn't appear in year one, it appeared in year two. Main idea: mentoring's payoff is delayed, which is exactly why programs cut for showing "no early results" may be cut too soon. Four answers, and the chapter has a spine. The tables now have jobs.

Answer these questions before you write, and your results chapter stops being the part readers endure. It becomes the part where your advisors, your committee, and even readers outside your field finally see what you saw in the data.

Data in Plain English helps you find the structure hiding in your results and build a chapter around it. The analysis was the hard part. Let's make sure it gets the story it earned.